A delightfully off-kilter Hamlet takes centre-stage in this superb, absurdist, psychosexual comedy by the Tel Aviv-based theatre company The Elephant and the Mouse.
Iftach Ophir is agreeably manipulable as a diffident playwright whose debut work is bashed and trashed by Erez Driguez's mock-grandiloquent, all-devouring artistic director in a pacy performance that fizzes with originality.
Driguez, 31, who works at the HaBima Repertory Theatre, and Ophir, 31, from the rival Cameri Theatre, combine brilliantly in the artfully quirky two-hander by Israeli psychologist-playwright Eldad Cohen, which works well on several levels.
Unfortunately, the oppressive heat inside the airless studio was on another level all together, and left Ophir's white shirt drenched in sweat, and some of the sell-out audience wilting, though it could not dampen the play's vivacious spirit.
Producer Noa Margalit, also 31, hopes that Repertory Theatre may gain a London outing. It certainly merits it.
